The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe

Published October 14, 2016

I recently read Kij Johnson’s The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, and I cannot recommend it enough. It’s a response to a H.P. Lovecraft story, but it isn’t horror; instead it (I assume) takes some of the critters and locations of Lovecraft’s work and uses them to populate a beautifully written fantasy tale set in a world that feels familiar yet unique in the same way that Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series does.

I’ve never read anything of Lovecraft’s, and I don’t often read fantasy, but The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe is phenomenal. It’s a novella, so it’s an easy read, and you can pick the ebook up for a song.

And because I can, here’s an excerpt from one of Kij Johnson’s short stories, Ponies. It’s a twisted, dark horror tale, with a core of sad childhood truth.

The invitation card has a Western theme. Along its margins, cartoon girls in cowboy hats chase a herd of wild Ponies. The Ponies are no taller than the girls, bright as butterflies, fat, with short round-tipped unicorn horns and small fluffy wings. At the bottom of the card, newly caught Ponies mill about in a corral. The girls have lassoed a pink-and-white Pony. Its eyes and mouth are surprised round Os. There is an exclamation mark over its head.

The little girls are cutting off its horn with curved knives. Its wings are already removed, part of a pile beside the corral.